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And Boom Goes The Dynamite, Toronto at Vancouver

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First off, I would like to give a a shout out to my buddy Steve, who I sell my Toronto tickets to every year.  He is a huge Leafs fan, and he is based in Seattle, so this is one of the few times he gets to see them. The only thing better than helping a friend get to see his favorite play is helping a friend see my favorite team whoop his teams ass every time he goes to see them.  

The second shout out I have is for my buddy Rick, who last week pulled off a spin-o-rama behind my net to deke someone so bad their jock strap flew into the rafters, and finished this off nicely by doing an end to end rush goal that basically sealed the game for us. Rick also has the uncanny ability of being able to beat me low blocker whenever he wants, thus making him my most feared person to face in warm up. You would think my tears would make him go easy on me, but they don’t….

Now, as for the game itself, tonight’s review is dedicated to Brian Burke. For the record, I enjoyed Brian Burke as our general manager. Sure he had a bit of an ego, and sure he liked to ramble and scream at the media occasionally, but there is nobody, and I mean nobody, who can pull off the “depressed shot in the press box” look like Burkie can. It’s just so freaking entertaining. You just know any time CBC has to fill space on their broadcast, they quickly look to Burke to fill that air. “Shoot guys, our camera on ice level is down, er….does Burke looked pissed off? Yes? Good, get a camera on him, that should buy us some time.” I patiently await the day when the US invades BC for water and power and the news cameras pan to a Burke press shot of him watching the events unfold. “What a terrible day this is for Canada….The US Army is rolling through Victoria as we speak….the Parliament Buildings are being destroyed, this is just awful…..let’s go to Brian Bruke to see what he thinks and yes, yes, it looks like he is quite distraught about this as well…..”

That being said, let’s get onto the game! 

What Happened

Toronto 2 Vancouver 6

I feel like I just watched a contest between two horribly mismatched people and I have to try and pretend the loser gave a good effort even though they were god awful. “You got two goals…..so that’s…..that’s nice…..you might have only gotten one, but you went ahead and you battled through that to get two……high five!”

First Period

The game started and that was the last time the Leafs were in this one. The Canucks, who seem to enjoy showing up for big games, decided to show Canucks fans the team we really have by outworking and outplaying the Leafs in almost every facet of the game. After almost a month now of watching Vancouver sleep walk through games, it was nice to finally see the team give one of its better efforts of the year. The grinders were grinding, the Luongo was Luonging, and the Sedins were Sedining. It was a wonderful night for new verbs and solid Canucks hockey.

Alex Burrows used this solid start to the game to get the first goal off of a great feed from Daniel Sedin. James “Wait, did you just shoot the puck at me? Is that allowed??” Reimer has this amusing habit of looking down at his pads after he lets in a goal, as if he expects to see a giant hole in them. We got to see this three more times before the night was done.

The second goal of the game was after a great effort from our fourth line (Wow, I got to actually say that about our 4th line, what odd times we live in) where Byron “Don’t call me Lord” Bitz worked hard to get the puck up to Lappy who took the puck along the boards and then threw it towards the front of the net. Manny “Superman” Malholtra of all people dove forward to knock the puck into the net, behind a surprised James Reimer. Many things surprise James Reimer. This brings us to our first pie chart:

leafspie And Boom Goes The Dynamite, Toronto at Vancouver

The period ended with the Canucks leading in shots 11 to 4 and in goals 2 to 0, while the Leafs ended the period leading in ‘sad depressed statements said on the bench’ 18-1 (The one depressed statement for Vancouver came from Cory Schneider who felt his hat was on too tight. He adjusted it and proceeded to have a happy time on the bench for the rest of the game. Kid is a pro.)

Second Period

Heading into the ‘Survive the Second!’ period, the Canucks 2-0 lead kind of scared me. The Canucks had a huge chance to make it 3-0 in the first when Henrik had a rebound just aching to be put into the net, but somehow Reimer accidentally made a save (he would later apologize for this save). The 2-0 lead is a tricky beast, often leaving the team who has the lead to sit back a bit, content with their lead, and afraid of trying to widen the gap to a larger one. But this was not to be the case on the night, as Burrows promptly made it 3-0 just three minutes into the second period. This goal was due to the hard work of the Sedins, as Daniel managed to find Alex Burrows  all alone in the slot in front of James “No, seriously, please stop shooting the puck” Reimer. This brings us to a bar chart:

graph3 And Boom Goes The Dynamite, Toronto at Vancouver

Yes, it was looking like an easy night for our favorite Canucks, as not many teams utilize the “Leave Burrows alone in the slot, what harm can he do there?” defence and survive to talk about it. David Booth had a chance to make it 4-0 when he managed to get a breakaway, and you would think the man who hunts in his off time would know how to put an animal down, but no, Booth shot wide on his chance.

The Leafs showed some fight as a mere few moments later Dion “Somebody ****ing gooooooo” Phaneuf decided to ‘gooooooo’ as he got one of the ugliest goals of the year. Before the goal, Lupul and Bieksa collided going to the net, which ended up with Luongo attemping to make sweet sweet love to Bieksa in the crease. Luongo, whose stick had fallen as he got tangled up with Bieksa, could only watch as the Leafs worked the puck to the point for Phaneuf to one timer the puck in past Luongo, who was playing deeper in his net than even Felix Potvin would dare to do. 

If you are a Leafs fan, this would have been the most fun for you watching this game, as the Leafs continued to pressure the Canucks as they had almost five whole minutes of actual offensive zone pressure, forcing Luongo to come up with a HUGE goal line glove save on Kessel and forcing Sami Salo to have to dive to deflect a puck away from what was looking like a sure goal for Lupul. Anytime Salo dives Canuck Nation holds its breath, but Sami was ok after this one, no harm done.

After the Canucks were done pretending the Leafs had a chance in this game, they decided to end Toronto’s night officially by scoring two more goals to end the period. Daniel “Not Henrik” Sedin scored a goal on James “OK, seriously, what’s with all the shooting?” Reimer and that was the end of Reimer’s night. Gustavsson entered the game and the first shot he faced was probably the worst thing a goalie can face for his first shot, that being a Sami Salo slap shot. The best part of this goal was that Lombardi had a chance to clear the puck but he flubbed it and the Canucks kept it in the zone and went into Harlem Globetrotters mode and eventually found Salo who blasted it past Jonas Gustavsson who was also for some reason playing deep in his net like Felix Potvin. (Were they honoring him tonight?)

Period ended 5-1 Vancouver.

Third Period

Much like Vancouver did in tonight’s game, I am going to try and end this paragraph as quickly as possible as this is going on a bit long here. The third period was basically an Aaron Rome special “Off the glass and out”, as Vancouver basically tried to run out the clock on this one. Bieksa, feeling generous however, decided to give Henrik his 50th assist of the season by scoring a goal halfway through the third period. I did not get an assist on this goal, sadly.This leads us to our last graph of the night:

graph4 And Boom Goes The Dynamite, Toronto at Vancouver

 

The Leafs managed to get a goal with under 20 seconds left in the game, as they finally managed to score on what seemed like their 5th shot in a series of shots that Luongo was robbing the Leafs left and right on.  Awesomely enough, the Leafs chose to celebrate this goal for some reason. This to me seemed like France celebrating surrendering to the Germans in World War II. “Hey, we did it, we surrendered but at least we kicked one of the German soldiers in the shin, hurray!”

End result: 6 to 2 for the good guys.

Highlight of the Game:

There were many choices for highlight of the night (Luongo had several saves that could have made it, and Salo’s power play goal could have made it) but none of them hold a candle to Manny’s diving goal. Manny, not known for his offence, not only somehow realizes in a split second he needs to break to the inside on the defender to have a chance at the pass, but he also dives forward to make contact with the puck to put it pass James Reimer. Awesome goal Manny!

Full Game Highlights:

As always, MAKAVELI719696 has you covered for full game highlights!

Random Thoughts:

– As much fun as I make of the Leafs, I have to do it. You know if the roles were reversed, Leafs fans would be insufferable and would be shoving this down our throats

– Glenn Healy is amusing because he likes to put forth theories and pretend they are fact. One of Glenn’s latest comments was that Vancouver has a new philosophy of not celebrating ANY goals until they win the Cup. What Glenn doesn’t realize is that it’s just mean spirited to celebrate scoring a goal on James Reimer.

– Lost in the drubbing of the Leafs will be the fact that Luongo played really really well in this game. For all the talk of the Canucks beating the crap out of the Leafs, this game was almost 3-2 at one point before the Canucks remembered that the Leafs main weakness is shots on net.

– Seriously, I could watch Reimer get scored on all day. His reaction after goals is priceless.

– The Sedins, whom I jinxed by trading for Henrik in my hockey pool so I could combine Daniel, Alex and Henrik (No joke, the Sedins went dead cold the moment I traded for Henrik) broke out in a big way tonight. After seeing pages and pages of stats of Lupul and Kessel outscoring the Sedins as a duo this year, the Sedins decided to ***** slap the stats guys at CBC by pumping in 4 points a piece. 

– Remember when Trent Klatt was the Sedins linemate?

– Remember when Jason King was the Sedins linemate?

– Remember when Anson Carter was an idiot?

– Alex Burrows is a Leafs Killer folks. Eight goals and seven assists in 10 career games against the Leafs. How badly would Ottawa kill to have this guy on their team?

– Chris Tanev got a nice love fest from CBC tonight. They were all over the kid giving him kudos. Not that he doesn’t deserve it, but it feels weird to hear all of CBC agree on a Canuck player being good.

– Ron MacLean was on his best behaviour and didn’t insult Alex Burrows tonight. He did however reportedly try and have Burrows run over by a car after the game. Luckily Burrows skills at diving saved his life. Ron did not appreciate the irony.

– Is it time for the playoffs yet?

– Word is the Canucks are out of the Rick Nash sweepstakes. Not that I ever thought he would be traded here, as I easily showed earlier this week why it wouldn’t happen. 

– Trade deadline is just over a week away. Or as I like to call it “The day the laughter died and Shea Weber didn’t get traded to Vancouver”

– Tonight was fun because any time the Leafs made a turnover it seemed that the Canucks burned them on it. This reminded me of a time when Vancouver used to get burned like this all the time against good teams. I never want to go back to those times.

– Clarke MacArthur turned over the puck for one goal and ended up in the box watching Salo score on another goal. Clarke was one punch from behind away from the Bertuzzi hat trick

– And finally, a big happy birthday to Cody Godson Hodgson who turned 22 today. Is there a better present then beating the Leafs on Hockey Night in Canada?

 

 

 



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